Vellum, incidentally, officially debuts here in the US tomorrow — a great way for Hal Duncan to say hello to these shores, I’d say (so go buy it). And also, of course, very nice to be in the company of Messers Duncan, Pratt and Marusek and the awesome Ms. Bear — who, if I may add has a hell of a short story in the upcoming Subterranean magazine issue. They all rock.

Other nominations of note (to me, at least): All my fellow Hugo nominees are also finalists — Charlie, Ken and Bob in Best Science Fiction Novel and GRRM in Best Fantasy Novel; Cory Doctorow has three finalist showings, in Fantasy Novel, Novella and Novelette; Kelly Link is also a three-time finalist in the Short Story, Anthology and Collection categories; James Patrick Kelly gets a nod in Best Novella; Scott Westerfeld gets a Best YA Book nod for Peeps;Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David G. Hartwell are both finalists in Best Editor, and Bob Eggleton and John Picacio show up as Best Artist finalists. Aside from these are other folks like Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, Terry Pratchett and China Miéville (among others) whom I wish I could pretend that I actually knew personally, but, alas, don’t. Be that as it may, it’s about sixteen different kinds of cool that I can look at lists like these and see so many of my friends on them, doing as well as they are, and I somehow get to be in there too. It’s geek paradise, it is. Or it is for me.

You’ll note that everyone on these lists are “finalists” not “nominees.” This is because (as I understand it) Locus already knows who won in each of the categories but is letting the tension linger in the air until the day of the Locus Awards ceremony, which is June 17th in Seattle (paired up with the Science Fiction Hall of Fame ceremony). Coincidentally, June 17th is also my wedding anniversary. COINCIDENCE?!?! Well, yes, I just said so. But a nice coincidence, nevertheless.

In any event, congratulations to all the other finalists, but especially those in the Best First Novel category. I am honored to be in your midst.

One, just in case people are wondering if there are a lot fanficcers out there or not, I’ll note that according to BlogPulse, the Lori Jareo post from Friday is the #2 Top Blog Post on teh Intarweebs today. Neat.

Two, a nice review of The Ghost Brigades in the Some Fantastic critzine, which you can download from here; they call TGB “an entertaining novel that points to a continued bright future for Scalzi as an SF author of note.” Groovy. Other reviews in this edition: Orson Scott Card’s Ultimate Iron Man, Vol. 1; Stephen Jones’s The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #16; Lucius Shepard’s A Handbook of American Prayer; Lou Anders’s Futureshocks; Justina Robson’s Silver Screen; Octavia Butler’s Fledgling; Chris Roberson’s Adventure, Vol. 1; & Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job. That’s good company.

(For those of you too lazy to link back, this is a recording of a Penguicon panel that was supposed to be about “Warfare in Science Fiction” until the hotel we were at told us they were uncomfortable with discussing warfare in a somewhat open area of the hotel. So we changed all references of “war” and other war-based nouns, verbs and adjectives to “tea” and other tea-based nouns, verbs and adjectives. And then we proceeded to have a very useful and cogent discussion. Just another example of how SF people don’t like being told what to do by the clueless.)

This fellow writes up a note about the Lori Jareo thing, and rather interestingly thinks the reason fanficcers are so outraged by what Ms. Jareo did is because they’re clueless slaves to the existing copyright paradigm. That should get a chuckle or two out of the fanficcers I know. I posted a rather lengthly response noting that what people think about the morality of current copyright law is an entirely separate conversation to the one that’s been going on here; click over to read it and to add your additional comments if you like. Play nice, of course, but I don’t need to tell you that.